Year One

The sickness came on suddenly, and spread quickly. The fear spread even faster. Within weeks, everything people counted on began to fail them. The electrical grid sputtered; law and government collapsed—and more than half of the world’s population was decimated.

Where there had been order, there was now chaos. And as the power of science and technology receded, magic rose up in its place. Some of it is good, like the witchcraft worked by Lana Bingham, practicing in the loft apartment she shares with her lover, Max. Some of it is unimaginably evil, and it can lurk anywhere, around a corner, in fetid tunnels beneath the river—or in the ones you know and love the most.

As word spreads that neither the immune nor the gifted are safe from the authorities who patrol the ravaged streets, and with nothing left to count on but each other, Lana and Max make their way out of a wrecked New York City. At the same time, other travelers are heading west too, into a new frontier. Chuck, a tech genius trying to hack his way through a world gone offline. Arlys, a journalist who has lost her audience but uses pen and paper to record the truth. Fred, her young colleague, possessed of burgeoning abilities and an optimism that seems out of place in this bleak landscape. And Rachel and Jonah, a resourceful doctor and a paramedic who fend off despair with their determination to keep a young mother and three infants in their care alive.

In a world of survivors where every stranger encountered could be either a savage or a savior, none of them knows exactly where they are heading, or why. But a purpose awaits them that will shape their lives and the lives of all those who remain.

The end has come. The beginning comes next.

Review:

I know what the blurb sounds like, post-apocalyptic paranormal horror, I realize that but—but—it’s Nora Roberts. She writes romance. She gives me happy endings. There has to be some of that in the story despite what the blurb sounds like, right?!?

Actually, nope, there doesn’t have to be. In fact there is almost no happiness in this entire book and it definitely does not end on a happy ending or even set up a happy ending. It is nothing like I hoped and everything that the blurb advertised. Is it fair for me to be disappointed? I don’t know.

The story starts out following several different people, you see the Doom and the decimation of the human population from their different views and eventually they all meet up together, only to have the ending abandon all but one person. I found that frustrating because the person that we wound up with was one of the most boring, even though she was a witch. We don’t even know who all is alive because of how they separated or even if we’ll see them all again. It felt like my time was wasted following those people only to have them abandoned.

The world was awful, there was no point of hope that wasn’t tainted by the awful either. It was depressing and what you would expect from the genre, but because of the author I kept hoping for more, for some bright spot.

Everyone was from New York City, which is annoying. They would vaguely mention the government and that people were being rounded up, but you never saw any of that. You saw the Raiders and the religious nut job group, but never the military. Only good people seem to die and stay dead, while the evil came back. Apart from the magic everything was just too realistic human wise, which I disliked because of the addition of the magic. Why does that always have to be the most real? Why can’t people be good? Or not horrible and evil?

Oh well. The book was mostly well written, I thought some sections could have been edited out, but then since I don’t know what’s coming out next they might actually matter latter. We’ll see, I’ll probably read the next book, but I definitely won’t be buying it in hardback. Probably.